Friday, December 22, 2006

Conference on Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings

Cardozo School of Law will host a conference on

Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings


Dates: January 28-29, 2007.

Venue: Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, 55 Fifth Avenue (5th Ave. & 12th St.), New York (Manhattan), New York


 

Program

First day (January 28, 2007):

9.00am-9.20am: Welcoming Comments (Tillers)

9.20am-11.00am:

Vern Walker, Visualizing the Dynamics around the Rule/Evidence Interface in Legal Reasoning
Richard Sherwin & Neal Feigenson, Thinking beyond the Shown: Implicit Inferences in Visual Evidence and Argument
Kevin Ashley, Comment

11.00am-11.20am: coffee break

11.20am-1.00pm:

Tim van Gelder, Rationale: A Generic Argument Mapping Tool
Chris Reed, Wigmore, Toulmin and Walton: The Diagramming Trinity and their Application in Legal Practice
Dale Nance, Comment

1.00pm-2.00pm: lunch

2.00pm-3.40pm:

John L. Pollock, Some Puzzles about Defeasible Reasoning
Ron Loui, A Modest Proposal for Annotating the Dialectical State of a Dispute
Richard Lempert, Comment

3.40pm-4.00pm: tea break

4.00pm-5.20pm:

Thomas F. Gordon & Doug Walton, Visualizing Arguments of the Carneades Argumentation Framework
Bart Verheij, Virtual Arguments: On the Design of Argument Assistants for Lawyers and Other Arguers
Marc Lauritsen, Comment

5.20pm-6.30pm: dinner

6.30pm-8.15pm:

Douglas N. Walton, Argumentation Theory for the Law of Evidence
Henry Prakken, Argument Visualisation Software for Crime Investigators: Design and First Experiences
William Twining, Comment

Second day (January 29, 2007):

9.00am-10.40am:

John Lowrance, Graphical Manipulation of Evidence in Structured Arguments
John Josephson, Graphical Display of Evidence and Inference in a Prototype System for Command-Post Information Fusion

10.40am-11.00am: coffee break

11.00am-1.00pm:

David Schum & Jon Morris, Law Comes to the Rescue of Intelligence Analysis: Evaluating HUMINT
Philip Dawid & Amanda B. Hepler, Bayesian Networks for the Analysis of Evidence
Branden Fitelson, Argument Diagrams, Bayes Nets, and Independent Evidence

1.00pm-2.00pm: lunch

2.00pm-3.40pm:

Bruce Hay, Law's Visual Imagination
Priit Parmakson, Can Effective Visual Representations Be Produced Systematically?
Neal Feigenson, Comment

3.40pm-4.00pm: tea break

4.00pm-6.20pm:

Jennifer Mnookin, Visual and Expert Evidence: Rhetorical Connections and Invisible Affinities
Samuel Solomon, Visual Storytelling - Contextualizing Evidence through Visualization Taken from Real Cases
Deirdre Dwyer, Comment
David Tait, Comment

6.20pm-6.35pm: Closing Comments (Prakken)


Conference officials:
Peter Tillers (Cardozo Law School): Conference chair; e-mail address: peter@tillers.net
Henry Prakken (Universiteit Utrecht & University of Groningen): Program chair; e-mail address: henry@cs.uu.nl
Thomas D. Cobb (University of Washington, Seattle): Deputy program chair; e-mail address: tomcobb@u.washington.edu
Jonathan Gottfried: Local affairs coordinator: Jonathan Gottfried; e-mail address: jgottfried@pobox.com"

Panelists:

  • Kevin Ashley
    University of Pittsburgh School of Law)
  • Thomas D. Cobb
    Lecturer
    University of Washington School of Law
  • Philip Dawid
    Professor of Statistics
    University College London
  • Deirdre M. Dwyer
    British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow
    Pembroke College
    Oxford University
  • Neal Feigenson
    Professor
    Quinnipiac University School of Law
  • Branden Fitelson
    Assistant Professor of Philosophy
    University of California at Berkeley
  • Tim van Gelder
    Associate Professor of Philosophy
    University of Melbourne
  • Thomas F. Gordon
    Senior Research Scientist
    eGovernment Competence Center
    Fraunhofer Institut fuer Offene Kommunikationssysteme; web log
  • Bruce Hay
    Professor
    Harvard Law School
  • Amanda B. Hepler
    Department of Statistical Science
    University College London
  • John Josephson
    Research Scientist
    Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research
    Computer Science and Engineering
    Ohio State University
  • Marc Lauritsen
    President
    Capstone Practice Systems
  • Richard Lempert
    Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology
    University of Michigan Law School
  • Ronald P. Loui
    Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
    Washington University in St. Louis
  • John D. Lowrance
    Program Director, Artificial Intelligence Center
    SRI International
  • Jennifer Mnookin
    Professor
    UCLA School of Law
  • Jon Morris
    Affiliate Faculty Member
    School of Information Engineering and Technology
    Systems Engineering and Operations Research
    George Mason University
  • Dale Nance
    Professor
    Case Western Reserve University School of Law
  • Priit Parmakson
    Lecturer
    Tallinn University
  • John L. Pollock
    Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science
    University of Arizona
  • Henry Prakken
    Lecturer, Department of Information and Computing Sciences
    Utrecht University
    &
    Professor of Law and ICT
    Faculty of Law
    University of Groningen
  • Chris Reed
    Senior Lecturer & Assistant Head of Research
    University of Dundee
  • David Schum
    Professor
    Systems Engineering & Operations Research
    George Mason University
  • Richard Sherwin
    Professor & Director, Visual Persuasion Project
    New York Law School
  • Samuel Solomon
    Chairman & CEO
    DOAR Litigation Consulting
  • David Tait
    Senior Lecturer
    School of Law
    University of Canberra
  • Peter Tillers
    Professor
    Cardozo School of Law
    Yeshiva University
  • William Twining
    Quain Professor of Jurisprudence emeritus
    University College London Law Faculty &
    Professor
    University of Miami School of Law
  • Bart Verheij
    Lecturer & Researcher
    Artificial Intelligence
    University of Groningen
  • Vern Walker
    Professor
    Hofstra University School of Law
  • Douglas N. Walton
    Professor of Philosophy
    University of Winnipeg

    Description of conference:

    One of the largest problems faced by criminal investigators, litigators, paralegals, triers of fact, and others interested in disputes about factual questions in legal settings is the sheer mass of evidence available. It is often difficult to remember, retrieve, and interpret voluminous evidential information, and important relationships and inconsistencies may go unnoticed as a result. Tools that support the storage, retrieval, and interpretation of large masses of evidence would therefore be of great use.

    Psychological studies have shown that people's ability to remember, retrieve, and interpret information is greatly enhanced when they organize it in a way that is meaningful to them. Scholars of the law of evidence have long suggested that graphical representations of evidential arguments and inferences could help people make sense of masses of evidence. As early as 1913, John Henry Wigmore claimed that his charting method promotes rational thinking about legal evidence. Wigmore had only pencil and paper to draw his cumbersome graphs. Today computer software may make it possible for almost anyone to construct useful graphical representations of arguments and inferences related to large collections of evidence. If such software were combined with with existing database, document management, and search technology, documentary evidence could be stored and retrieved in accordance with the user's view of a case. This would facilitate the transfer of a case file from one person to another because it would make it easier for recipients of files to grasp the signficance of the evidentiary details of a case.

    Software for graphical representation of evidential argument is currently being investigated for use in various domains. Argument visualization software has been designed, for instance, to support the teaching of scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills (e.g., Belvedere, Reasonable, Araucaria, Convince Me), to support intelligence analysis, and to facilitate individual or collaborative problem solving (e.g., Questmap, SEAS). Moreover, current artificial intelligence research offers precise accounts of evidential reasoning and thus provides a clear semantics of graphical notations as well as computationall methods.

    In the legal domain, fact investigators and litigators increasingly use software that supports the storage and retrieval of information in terms of conceptual and relational networks (e.g., Holmes 2, Analyst's Notebook). As yet, however, such tools offer little or no support for structuring thinking about information: existing software allows users to store evidentiary data in terms of events, objects, actors, and the relations among these things, but it does not allow users to represent how such data support or undermine factual hypotheses.

    This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars and practitioners from fields such as law, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. The following topics and issues will be addressed:

    • New and current graphical means for visualization of factual inference and proof.
    • Semantics of graphical notations: what are the underlying theories of evidential reasoning, including jurisprudential, philosophical, psychological, rhetorical, logical, and mathematical theories?
    • Software tools that are currently available or under development for graphical representation of factual inference and proof.
    • Potential contexts for the use of such software (e.g., criminal investigation, intelligence analysis, trials, and law teaching).
    • Can graphical representation of evidential argument support automatic evaluation of hypotheses?
    • How can current insights into human-computer interactuions be exploited to increase the usefulness of such software; e.g., how can visual complexity generated by large masses of evidence be managed?
    • Are there pertinent empirical studies and findings about real-world use of evidence-charting methods in legal and other contexts?


    Drafts and abstracts of some or all papers will be made available online at http://tillers.net/conference.html shortly before the conference begins. Final versions of the papers will be published in Law, Probability and Risk in 2007 and 2008.


    The public is warmly encouraged to attend the conference. Advance registration is not required and there is no registration fee. However, there will be a charge for any lunches or dinners that attendees elect to take at the site of the conference, at Cardozo Law School. If you are not a panelist and would like to join us for any lunches or dinners at Cardozo, please RSVP to the address shown below by January 15, 2007, and indicate which meals you wish to purchase, enclosing payment of $35 for each. Please make checks payable to Cardozo School of Law. Send payment to

    Alisa Norr
    Legal Secretary
    Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman LLP
    1633 Broadway, 46th floor
    New York, NY 10019
    United States


    Hotel arrangements may be made through the conference travel agency:

    Morris Park Travel Bureau
    1745 Wiliamsbridge Road
    Bronx, NY 10461
    1-718-792-9850 or toll free 1-877-526-8844
    Fax: 1-718-863-7121
    Email: MPTVL@AOL.COM
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